zlacker

You've hit the nail on the head - the term "political" is being used as a motte and bailey to take advantage of our intuition about bona fide political speech to cover for activities that aren't related to good faith debate. Like sure, tricking people into not voting is in some sense a "political" game, but it's not the kind of thing we'd consider "political speech" that needs protection. Same thing with assembling a flash mob to trash the capitol.

And yes, this definitional/access tension always exists when taking political stances that go against the entrenched power structure. Try to get an antiwar opinion broadcast in 2003 - music DJ's weren't even allowed to play songs whose lyrics might hint that war in general might be a bad thing. Dealing with this is just a completely new experience for those on the right that have gone from being conservative (ie generally supportive of the incumbent power structure and institutions) to revolutionary/reactionary and directly against the status quo power structure.

Social mass media, like all mass media, is now controlled by big capital (as was inevitable), with varying degrees of the individual employees adding some grassroots slant. Focusing on the slight individual flavor and ignoring the overriding power dynamic is just falling into the same old disempowering partisan trap.